Thicker Than Water

When my parents were regulars here, social propriety dictated that the standing drinkers were men: tonight there was a fair mix, but I noticed that there was a heavy age bias, with most of the faces - both at the bar and along the wall - belonging to my mum and dad’s generation. The Breeze clearly wasn’t managing to sell itself as a happening place for the younger social drinker: no widescreen TV, no games machines, no jukebox even. There was a one-armed bandit sitting in an unfrequented corner, which probably made less income in a month than the bar staff earned from tips, but that was the only concession to the modern era.

I didn’t recognise more than half a dozen people, and none of them seemed to recognise me. Life is the best disguise of all, and I’d been through a lot of it since the last time I’d bought a round in this place.

But Harold Keighley hadn’t changed a bit. Standing dead centre at the bar, he was pulling a pint of Stingo from a chipped black hand pump with a golden liver bird perched on its apex, expertly tipping the glass to a shallower angle as it filled so that the head would be an even half-inch or so.

He’d always been a big man - Hungry Harold, Harold the Barrel - and now he’d filled out to even more heroic proportions: his size, and his fearsome flatulence, were legendary, as was his refusal to treat drinking yourself into oblivion as anything other than a strict business proposition. His face, which I couldn’t remember in any other condition than flushed hectic red, was heavy-jowled and pugnacious, topped with a full head of hair the colour of the snow you’re not supposed to eat. Mind you, it would probably have been pure white if Harold hadn’t been a forty-a-day man: even now, in defiance of the recent ban, he had a fag hanging from the corner of his mouth - inspiring other, similar beacon fires around the room.

He finished pulling the pint, set it down, took the money, gave change. I waited patiently while he dealt with two other customers who were at the bar before me.

A younger guy with a nose-stud who was also serving asked me if he could get me anything, but I sent him on his way with a curt shake of the head. Harold had seen me by this time and I waited patiently while he worked his way around to me.

‘Matty Castor,’ he said, wagging his pudgy finger at me. ‘I thought you were a priest now.’

‘He is,’ I confirmed. ‘I’m not. I’m the other one. Felix.’

‘The little bugger who used to steal the beer mats.’

‘The same.